FoSotD – 11-Nov-2011: The entire Republican presidential field, except for Herman Cain
And it goes to them for not jumping on Cain at last night’s debate, over the sexual harassment allegations.
You’re going to regret that move. Except maybe for Newt, because nobody would buy him giving someone grief about sexual harassment.
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Rick Perry’s horrible debate performance…
Last night probably sank Team Perry for good.
It’s one thing to have poor debate performances your first couple times up. He could have practiced and gotten past those, especially since there are several more debates to go.
But forgetting 1/3rd of your main speaking point?
Bye, Rick. It was nice knowing you. (No, not really. And you should change your first name before Dan Savage goes after Santorum again.)
And the pendulum swings the other way (a little)
Yesterday was an off year election / voting day in a number of places.
Last year, Democrats rather stupidly stayed home, out of frustration with the lack of progress by Obama. This allowed a number of very important Republican victories, which that party decided was a mandate, even though many of the races they won were actually rather close.
Because of this “mandate”, the Republicans pushed for a number of policy changes, on a state and federal level. In this, they were backed by the Tea Party, an extremist group with only one (maybe two) policy points – lower taxes. (The second being that a brown person shouldn’t be president.)
Yesterday, however, the policies generated by that mandate started being rolled back.
- Maine kept same day voter registration. Republicans opposed this (and are generally in favor of vote limiting efforts) because they determined that people who register to vote the same day that they vote, tend to lean to the liberal side of things. Other Republican voter restriction efforts are attempts to limit the votes of minorities. In some places, the Justice Department is automatically fighting them, due to a history of voter suppression in those states; in other states, it will likely take an independent lawsuit to challenge them.
- Arizona recalled the politician who brought “papers, please!” to the state. Which will, hopefully, be the first step towards legislatively removing that law.
- Ohio rolled back their anti-union law. This will hopefully generate more interest in recalling Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
- And Mississippi rejected a law that would have defined life as starting at conception, thus treating every miscarriage as a potential crime – something that the extreme Religious Right was pushing for, to the point where they were planning on using a win here to launch the same issue in four other states.
Now, if the Democrats can keep from being stupid in the next election, this might start being the “Land of the Free” again.
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My massive distrust of Libertarian philosophy (Part 1 of likely many)
I distrust Libertarian political / economic philosophy.
Now note: I don’t inherently distrust people who claim to be Libertarians. I know more than a few, and I trust them. As individuals.
But I look at the political theory, and I don’t find it to be workable. And so, this series of posts. First up, the “Libertarians in name only”.
One of the common tenets of libertarian political and economic policy is the removal of restrictions and regulations on business. And there are a number of “libertarians” who use this (and get other libertarians to agree with them) to say things like, “the government shouldn’t have the right to tell me who I have to provide service to”. What this is, is racism. What these fake libertarians are saying is, “we only serve black/Asian/Mexican/etc people because the government forces us to”.
The real libertarians fall in line with this, saying that they should be able to do this, but that if they do, they’ll only be punishing themselves, because less and less people will do business with them, and it will be self correcting.
It’s one of those arguments that feels right. You sit there going, “Yeah, I can see how that would work”. The problem is that not everyone would know. Or if they did know, they may not have a choice but to do business with the individual. And that’s why those particular government regulations were put into place to begin with.
As a side note, though… I’ll mention what I believe is the most honest branch of the libertarians. And that’s the people who are libertarians because they want to smoke pot. They’re opposed to the government regulations on marijuana, and quite often, don’t care about other government policy. They just want to get stoned. And the Libertarian party is, to them, the most likely way to get what they want.
FoSotD: 8-Nov-2011 Jesus, Herman Cain and Newt
Ok, so I missed a few days there. Sure, I could have commented on David Williams asking why Hindus can’t love Jesus. But, when you get down to it, that’s an Evangelical Republican dickhead being an Evangelical Republican dickhead. Yes, he’s FoS, but it’s not really above the board.
No, instead, I’ll comment briefly on Herman Cain.
At the time that I write this, we’re up to five women saying he was sexually inappropriate. At least two of those women have been paid off, to the tune of $80,000, by Cain’s then employer.
And Cain said he knew nothing about it. (A story which has changed more times than there are accusers.)
I have to wonder if I’m the only one hoping that his count goes to nine…
Cain’s sexcapades has been good for someone, though. Newt Gingrich, who hardly has a good record on dealing with women, seems to be picking up the voters that Cain is losing. Which is not good news for Romney, and has never been good news for any of the also-ran contenders (Santorum [don’t google that!], Huntsman, or T-Paw).
The Republicans actually have me waiting for their first three primaries, so we can get rid of some of these people, and concentrate on the core crazy.
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FoSotD: 4-Nov-2011 John Boehner
John.
Seriously.
Nobody believes it when you call Grover Norquist “some random person”. This is Grover Norquist. Who, unlike the character Grover from Sesame Street (though, if you give the muppet glasses, and the politician forgets to shave a few more days, they do resemble each other), is the guy who currently has the GOP’s nuts in a vice, because he got most of your Senators and Representatives to sign a pledge to “not raise taxes”.
No matter how good an idea it might be. No matter what the reason.
No new taxes.
Both Bush (the smart one) and Reagan said they didn’t want to raise taxes. Both did. Reagan raised taxes something like 17 times.
Now, I admit, I wouldn’t be thrilled with a tax increase. But the US has both a spending issue and a revenue issue. Certainly cutting spending, in some areas, is needed. But raising taxes is also needed. We can’t cut our way to solvency; that way lies Greece.
FoS of the Day…
Hermain Cain’s campaign for saying that Rick Perry is behind the sexual harassment issues that Cain is currently having to deal with.
Now, like every other pundit (or wanna-be pundit) out there, I recognize that this is Cain’s campaign saying that Perry is behind it being news, not that Perry entrapped (or whatever) Cain into potentially harassing women.
But it doesn’t make sense.
Perry is so far back in the polls from Cain, that he shouldn’t bother. Sure, there’s a good amount of “go after the frontrunner”, but even before this, Cain’s stock was slowly sinking.
The person they should be looking at is Newt. He’s the candidate most likely to benefit from these accusations (which is, in itself, funny, given how many ex-wives he has, and how he left one of them).
Announcing….
The premier cockroach based political cartoon in the world…
Scurrying from the Light…
Village Bastard…
There’s a saying that every village has an idiot.
If you look at politics these days, it seems that what we have isn’t a village idiot; we have a large collection of national idiots. And, what’s worse, they don’t seem to realize that they’re idiots.
The reason that they don’t, of course, is that they’ve been elected. This makes them feel special, as though their opinion matters more than the people who put them there. And they’re going to have, I think, a very harsh wake-up call in the 2012 election.
Quite a lot of people are going to be upset with the results of the election. Many of them will be Republicans, Tea Party members, and Libertarians.
And I find myself smiling at that possibility.
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